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Forum:Outsider's Perspective - a few suggestions
I'll be upfront: I've been using this encyclopedia for a long while, and have occasionally added a few things to it over the years. So I've created an account to, primarily, make a few suggestions or add some ideas, particularly from the POV of someone who comes on the site to research information and the like. First of all, the header templates, particularly the spoiler warning templates, the non-canon templates and the theory warning templates. They are pretty much an eyesore - they're big and blocky with bold text. The spoiler box isn't so bad in itself, although I did poking around other wikis and they either had boxes that were less obnoxious. Some wikis forgo using spoiler warnings entirely (presumably operating under the assumption that spoilers are to be expected). At least on has the spoiler template hide the section if you want. The biggest eyesore comes from the non-canon and theory boxes: they are big, ugly blocks of text that visually detracts and distracts from the information on the page. I can't really describe why, and it might just be me, but there you go. Two things I also notice about these boxes is 1: they often but up to each other on the page, making the problem worse, and 2: the non-canon boxes are slapped at the very top of any "non-canon" page, like Hyrule Warriors or the Tingle game, and every page related to those games has it at the very top. It's unwieldy. The second, probably more controversial idea has to do with the theory sections themselves. Some of the "theories" (not what that word means anyway) are pretty much contradicted by what the games (or Hyrule Historia) say themselves or correlate things that are similar in the smallest of ways and have no real evidence to back it up. One page puts forth a theory... and then immediately debunks it. Kind of redundant, I don't know. I know the Legend of Zelda games are rife with epileptic trees, but could they perhaps be removed from where the actual, canon information is? Like to a forum or a special page or subpages or something? The last one (I think) is the possibility of splitting character pages. Specifically, a number of characters appear several times throughout the series that share the same name (or share the same design but have no name, such as the Postman) but are not the character, and share hundreds of years between them. For example, Tingle appears in Majora's Mask, The Wind Waker and The Minish Cap. According to Hyrule Historia, MC takes place a few hundred years before OoT, MM takes place a few years after OoT (in the child timeline) and WW takes place hundreds of years after OoT (in the adult timeline). The same with Sahasrahla; he appears in ALttP and ALBW, but in the second he is a descendant of the Sahasrahla in the first; therefore, two separate characters. Another is Impa, who not only appears in multiple games, has several very diverse designs and actually dies at the end of one game. And yes, this would apply to Link and Zelda. And Ganon/dorf, but not as extensively. Okay, that's all I got. I'd be willing to elaborate if asked questions. Whitebird109 (talk) 04:18, January 7, 2015 (UTC) :In our defense: :Isn't that the point of those templates? To be noticed? Besides, all three templates you mentioned (spoiler, non-canon, and theory) have the same format. So if you have a problem with one, you should logically have a problem with all three. :Theories are always discussed and agreed upon by the community before being implemented. We try to use reasonable and/or popular theories, and we don't consider Hyrule Historia canon anyway. Do you have any examples of what you mean? :We've had this suggestion before, but to my knowledge, each time we decide against it. Condensing relatively small amounts of information into one page seems fine to me. Just because they're designed differently, they have the same name, so it's easier to add a new section. :But thank you for your feedback. —'Ceiling Master' 19:14, January 7, 2015 (UTC) ::Out of curiosity, why isn't Hyrule Historia considered canon? Isn't it authored by the Aonuma and Miyamoto, the two individuals with the most oversight over the series? Why wouldn't it be taken into account? Whitebird109 (talk) 21:44, January 7, 2015 (UTC) :::If you want elaboration on that, here is most of the discussion. —'Ceiling Master' 01:12, January 8, 2015 (UTC) ::::A lot of that seems... highly biased. I would think the purpose of this wiki (and of an encyclopedia in general) is to present all information as neutrally as possible, and to consider something non-canon when the company that owns the property and the two creative minds behind the series present it as canon goes against this thought. And considering that the creators have pretty much said that they will contradict previously established facts if it means creating a fun and enjoyable game, then this wiki disregarding information released from an official source because it contradicts previous facts would also invalidate about half of the series itself. ::::I would perhaps suggest an alternative and a clarification: part of the problem stems from the fact that if Hyrule Historia is considered absolute canon, then information that has been around for sometimes decades must be tossed out, yes? Disregarding it completely is an easy way to avoid this (see above), but it is information in written form from an official source, so ignoring it would be like ignoring a parking ticket and hoping it might not be a problem later. So instead of overwriting old information or ignoring it completely, wherever and on whichever pages is necessary have a section called Hyrule Historia that holds whatever information the book provides on the subject. For example, Link, specifically the tidbit in HH that A Link to the Past Link is the same Link in Link's Awakening and the Oracle games; this information can be provided in this section, and it won't override or contradict with the rest. Also mentioning inconsistencies would be prudent, but not declaring it non-canon because of that. ::::If that doesn't make sense, consider the fact that modern history books, if well written and researched, will consider multiple and sometimes if not frequently contradictory historical documents and writings on an event or person. Why? In many cases, it's because that's the only information available, and anything that could perfectly clarify the subject has been destroyed by time or never existed to begin with; thus, this allows the reader to be presented with all of that information on the subject available, and not just what the historian wants the reader to know. In essence, this wiki would be presenting multiple "arguments" or "points of view" on the subject and allowing whoever is interested to draw their own conclusions. Like the creates of the Legend of Zelda series to do anyway. ::::I'm sorry, that's such a long wall of text. I don't really mean to be combative about this, but I really, really, really don't think declaring the information non-canon and ignoring it is very professional, if "professional" could apply to this situation. Too summarize, I would say neutrally presenting all information is paramount, even if it does contradict; it is still information from an official source, and some people might be interested in reading how it relates to everything else. ::::There is another alternative to the one suggested above, but that would delve into changing the "Non-canon" sections and indexes and such into something else. I'll elaborate if asked. Whitebird109 (talk) 04:54, January 8, 2015 (UTC) :::::I don't really see how we're ignoring it. Plenty of articles . I mean, the thing you mentioned about Link being the same in the Oracle games and ALttP is in the Link article. —'Ceiling Master' 23:19, January 8, 2015 (UTC) ::::::Even though I strongly dislike the Hyrule Historia timeline, I've been unsettled by our decision to dismiss it all as non-canon for a long time now. The decision to dismiss the whole book was clearly based on our bias, which nearly all active users at the time shared. Besides which, despite the message at the top of the HH page, we treat the canonicity of its contents inconsistently on different pages. I haven't brought this up because I assumed that the other users still had this mentality, meaning the suggestion would have no hope of gaining any traction. Jedimasterlink (talk) 16:46, January 12, 2015 (UTC) :::::I'm sorry guys, but I want to add a text here. This text is from a partner wiki of ZeldaWiki. Okay, I'm active here here on Wikia since Dec. 2009 and I love this wiki but there's something I want to show you. I don't want to attack no one here in this wiki but this criticism is from a neutral perspective and I don't want to damage this wiki. I think we should all here be open to convictions and to be frank with everyone. So we can do something to understand/helping each other. I didn't wrote this text, I found it somewhere. „''Zum englischen zelda-wikia: Für ein Tingle-Spiel wurde und wird eine gefälschte Titelseite genutzt und das japanische Logo von OoTMQ wurde und wird für das nie veröffentlichte Ura Zelda für 64DD genutzt. Korrekturen wurden dort unbegründet rückgängig gemacht, die getroffenen Falschaussagen konnten dort auch nicht begründet oder erklärt werden, und ferner verstieß ein Administrator gegen die dortigen Regeln. Folglich ist das englische zelda-wikia und (einige) Administatoren/Moderatoren, die beim Rückgängigmachen und Nicht-erklären-können-aber-trotzdem-daran-festhalten beteiligt waren, unseriös, willkürlich usw.. Beim engl. zelda-wikia heißt es "Zeldapedia does not allow trivia sections in articles. Information relevant to the article should be put into the body of the page as opposed to trivia lists.". Einige Trivia-Informationen kann man sicher im Artikel einbauen, andere dagegen sind sicherlich für einige Artikel auch eher unbedeutend, sodaß ein Abschnitt wie "Trivia" angebracht/sinnvoll ist. Faktisch sind (noch) einige Trivia-Abschnitte vorhanden, was dann zu einem Widerspruch zwischen Regeln/Ansprüchen und Artikelinhalten führt. Bei einigen Namen (z.B. Link und Zora's Domain) werden auch hylianische Zeichen genutzt. Da es mehrere hylianische Schriften gibt und da die hylianischen Zeichen da auch nicht irgendwie wichtig sind, ist das eher unsinnig. Im engl. zelda-wikia heißt es sowohl "Hyrule Historia and its timeline-related content is not regarded as canon by Zeldapedia due to numerous conflicts and contradictions with established facts. As a result, no such contradictory content should be used as a canon source in any wiki article." als auch "Non-canon warning: This article or section contains non-canonical information that is not considered to be an official part of the Legend of Zelda series and should not be considered part of the overall storyline.". Da Hyrule Historia offizieller Kanon sein sollte, könnte das unter Umständen zu Widersprüchen führen. Es werden - soweit ich sah - keine Einzelnachweise/Quellen/Belege angegeben. Insb. bei Aussagen von Nintendo-Leuten scheinen mir diese aber angebracht zu sein. Das engl. zelda-wikia nutzt (teilweise) "Spoiler"-Warnungen. Es ist selbstverständlich, daß in einem Wiki (und auch in einem wikia) Informationen vorhanden sind, die den Spaß beim Lesen/Anschauen/Spielen trüben können. Somit sind entsprechende Warnungen - vielleicht abgesehen von einem allgemeinen Hinweis irgendwo - unnötig und das engl. zelda-wikia wirkt dadurch noch unschöner.“ :::::Put this text in Google translator. Again, I don't want to hurt anyone nor to damage this wiki. I just found this text and I thought it could be interesting for all ZP editors to understand the outsider's perspective. I must admit that I love the design of this wiki and the article structure and as such user I'm here active for a long time. — ShiramLudgerusээ 11:51, January 9, 2015 (UTC) Yeah, I couldn't understand most of that. The only thing I got was something about trivia sections and the last sentence says we look ugly. Care to elaborate on all that? —'Ceiling Master' 19:35, January 9, 2015 (UTC) :Ugly? Whoa, thats Google Translator! ._. „Unschön“ meants „unlovely“ („schön“ / „beutiful“ or „nice“). I could translate it. :„There is an article about a Tingle game with wrong content and the original logo of OoTMQ for Ura Zelda 64DD was never used then and never used now. Corrections were been reverted without reasons given and the users who reverted the corrections gave false statements with no arguments. An administrator abused his rights and blocked the user who made the right corrections for the article. :Trivia: „... Off course there are trivia sentences you can add in the content of the articles, but there other trivia sentences you can not build in the content of articles because they differ from texts and that's why is a trivia section useful.“ :„In some articles (like Link or Zora's Domain) you can find there hylian symboles from ''The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. But there are more hylian symbols from other Zelda games and they've differences. You can say (because there are other symbols) that this is completly unnecessary.“ Spoiler warning / Non-canon warning: See above. :Hyrule Historia: „The Hyrule Historia is a canonical creation from Nintendo but there are Non-canon warning templates in the articles.“ (-> „- vielleicht abgesehen von einem allgemeinen Hinweis irgendwo - unnötig und das engl. zelda-wikia wirkt dadurch noch unschöner.“) : I think we should create a forum thread and talk about that. I understand now what the user mean who wrote this text. — ShiramLudgerusээ 10:12, January 10, 2015 (UTC) ::Yeah, Google Translate isn't the best. ::Well, the first issue about an (noticeably unnamed) Admin abusing his/her rights doesn't really apply anymore, since chances are he/she is inactive now. That's in the past, and I don't see the point in bringing it up now. I seriously doubt JML is going to abuse his rights. ::I don't think our policy on trivia sections is going to change anytime soon. I think that if a sentence of trivia can't be put in the article, it probably shouldn't be on Zeldapedia to begin with. ::I still don't get what you're saying about the Hylian symbols. ::And it seems to me that you want to revive the discussion about whether Hyrule Historia is canon or non-canon. Is that correct? —'Ceiling Master' 16:04, January 10, 2015 (UTC) :::No, not really. — ShiramLudgerusээ 17:27, January 11, 2015 (UTC) ::::Then... what are you wanting to create a forum thread about? —'Ceiling Master' 20:33, January 11, 2015 (UTC) :This is a response to the original post, specifically the spoiler/non-canon templates and theories. :In general, I don't mind the warning templates at all. However, I do think that the templates look rather sloppy when placed around an entire article (which is generally only an issue on non-canon subjects). I think I remember a discussion about making a box template for these pages akin to the "cleanup" and "future content" templates, but I don't think it went anywhere. I wouldn't be opposed to the creation of such a template. :Hyrule Historia conflicts aside, I suspect the bad theories you mentioned are relics of the distant past that we just haven't deleted yet. In recent years, we've become much more strict about adding theories, partly because the wiki was way too lax about that sort of thing in its early days. Feel free to discuss such theories on the talk page of the article in question; you likely won't be met with much resistance to deleting it. As for making a separate page for theories, I find that the theory sections sufficiently remove theories from the factual/canonical information. Jedimasterlink (talk) 16:45, January 12, 2015 (UTC)